Charles Moore Reviews Jade 1.2 Quick Digital Image Correction for Leopard
In testing Jade's capabilities, I was repeatedly astonished at how it can take shots that I've spent substantial time tweaking with Photoshop Elements' or Pixelmator's formidable suites of image correction tools, and significantly improve them even more almost instantly and with a simple button-click. In addition to the excellent results, this program is a powerful time-saver that does exactly as it's advertised to do. After using Jade, I'm not in the least surprised that Version 1.2 is a staff pick on Apple's download website.
Jade 1.2 leverages state-of-the-art algorithms to enhance color, contrast and dynamic range without any user adjustment required for both individual shots and batch lots. Jade uses its proprietary algorithms to enhance color, contrast and dynamics, while preserving the overall quality of the images. If you wish, Jade also provides manual controls to fine-tune intensity values, the contrast of the image and the color correction for unbalanced images. however, I found that this was seldom necessary. Jade gets it right by default almost every time.
In brief summary, Jade allows you to:
• produce excellent photo enhancement with a single click
• stop bothering with puzzling parameters
• remove the obligation to learn the insights of digital photo processing
• shorten the time needed to fix many photos
• produce very good unattended results when dealing with large volumes of photos
Jade is simplicity itself to use. Just drag and drop photos or folders containing photos to its interface window or the Dock icon, and let 'er rip.
The Jade window has two main parts:
• the thumbnail gallery of the available images which can be positioned to the left or right in the program preferences, and you can also adjust the size of the thumbnails using the handy slider control.
• the image display on the left where you can preview the originals and the filter results
Jade's user interface is simple, clean and intuitive. To activate the filter click on the Jade Enhanced Icon on the toolbar or select the Enhance command in the Image menu. As soon as an image is selected from the thumbnails, the enhancement filter starts. On the bottom progress bar you can see if the filter is working. The status area also informs you if the displayed image is original or filtered. However, Jade does its stuff so quickly, you don't spend a lot of time viewing the unprocessed image. After you've enhanced your photo you can click on it to temporarily revert to the unprocessed image for comparison (however, Jade does not display before and after side by side).
You can load your photos into Jade by:
• Dragging
You can drag any image or folder to Jade or to the Jade icon on the Dock. Jade loads all images contained in the dragged folders ignoring non-image files and sub-folders. Jade can read any file format supported by Leopard. RAW/NEF images are supported. images handled?RAW/NEF images handled?
or
• Using the menus
You can use the menus to load the images from your disk or network.
Choose
- "File>Load..." (?O) to load the gallery with the selected images removing the old ones
- "File>Add..." (??O) to add the selected images to the gallery
Just check the "Recurse folders" option to load all images contained in all the subfolders, subsubfolders, etc. of the selected folder.
Using the menus you can load the images from the iPhoto Library (or similars, e.g. Aperture).
When using the menus click on the Photos entry of the Media group in the Load Images panel, down on the left.
To remove photos from the Thumbnail Gallery, select the photos you want to remove and press the Delete key or choose Edit>Delete. Note that this operation does not delete your photos from your hard drive directory - just removes them from the Jade Gallery.
You can save an enhanced copy of the image by choosing "File>Save & Filtered As..." menu. You will be asked for the format (usually JPG) and the destination folder and name of your filtered image.
Alternatively you can overwrite the original image with the enhanced copy. Just choose "File>Save & Filtered over Original..." menu. The enhanced image will be saved with the same name and format of the original one. Jade will ask for any parameter that cannot be figured out from the original image itself. However, be very careful with this as the original image will be deleted and moved to the Trash.
As an advanced user, you can process and save many images in a single operation. Jade can also filter and save all the selected images in a folder. Jade can filter in place the whole gallery of images. Jade does this by filtering each of the selected images, saving it in a temporary place, moving the original to the Trash, and finally replacing the original with the filtered image. The original will be removed from the gallery too. While this is obviously a powerful feature of Jade allowing you to filter thousand of images in a row with no intervention, it can be potentially dangerous. Imagine moving your iPhoto library to the Trash unintentionally. Be careful when using this feature, which is activated by choosing the "Save over Originals" tab.
iPhoto can be configured to use Jade as an External Editor for its photos. Jade behaves as any other application with this role. To configure iPhoto to use Jade to edit your photos: open "iPhoto > Preferences..." and set Jade in the "Edit photo" popup menu as an external editor.
Jade is a compact application that starts up very quickly. Images dragged into or menu-selected into Jade appear in the viewing window automatically adjusted to fit the window area, and there are also Zoom controls with a limited range.
I had to root around a bit in my image files to find some shots that would give Jade a challenge. This one is out of season, but does illustrate what Jade can do with a not great dark shot. It's still no prize-winner, but I think you'll agree that it's an improvement.
This one is a better image to start with, and the improvement is more subtle, but also quite evident.
I was able to challenge Jade's ability with this image - I think the large area of reflection on the car's hood fooled the algorithms a bit in automatic mode.
However, it was a tough assignment, although I did find that in this particular instance some tweaking with Photoshop Elements' correction tools did yield a better result that Jade did automatically
But then again, by experimenting with Jade's manual Parameters adjustments, I arrived at the compromise I preferred, with more pop and a sharper, brighter background.
Here are some more examples of how Jade does compared with other image editors.
I found Jade to be lively and responsive even on my old 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook, and I encountered no bugginess or other angularities during testing. It must really fly on a MacIntel machine. There's a Windows version as well, if you're still on the Dark Side.
In summary, Jade gives you an awful lot of almost effortless image correcting power priced at thirty bucks for the Home version (which is functionally identical to the Pro version - see below). It's essentially a one trick pony that performs its trick extraordinarily well and not a comprehensive image editor substitute for for Photoshop Elements, Pixelmator, or Acorn - there are no red-eye fix (yet), smudge, clone, or selection tools and so forth. That said, I figure that about 90 percent of the time Jade will do the trick very satisfactorily for you, anmd if you work with digital images a lot and value your time, it's is a tool you're going to want to have.
I'm giving Jade a four out of four rating.
System requirements:
* Mac OS X Version 10.5 (Leopard) or higher
* Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel
* 10.4 MB Hard Drive space
Jade 1.2 is offered in both Home and Pro versions, and are available as a full-featured 30 day demo. Jade Home is •19.99 EUR ($30.00 US at today's exchange rate), and Jade Pro is 49.99 ($75.00) EUR. With a Pro Registration Key you can use Jade for any purposes, personal or commercial. An Apple Aperture Plugin that makes use of the same identical algorithms and parameters as Jade is also available. Owners of the Jade Aperture plug-in may take advantage of a big discount on both Home and Pro license.
DataMind:
http://www.datamind.biz/
Jade Overview:
http://jade.datamind.biz/
Direct Download Link:
http://jade.datamind.biz/files/Jade.dmg
Purchase Link:
http://jade.datamind.biz/
Charles W. Moore
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